have realised the danger and to have taken a bold but well-considered step to meet it. While Stefan was engaged in breaking down the armed resistance of the burghers of Dantzig, who would have none of him, the forces of Moskovy were sent in overwhelming strength into the Baltic provinces, and stronghold after stronghold wrested from Swede and Pole alike. Even the Holsteiner and German troops were treated as enemies--Duke Magnus was in temporary disgrace--and the country-folk were in some instances punished with brutal severity, flogged, burned alive, and in other ways made to suffer for the obstinate resistance of a foreign garrison. As a display of armed strength and resolution the campaign would have been valuable had it been followed up by a demand for a definite peace with Poland, coupled with a threat of immediate invasion of that country. Ivan had sufficient troops at his disposal to have overrun Kourland and parts of Lit’uania and to have forced peace or an unseasonable war upon Stefan. Instead of which, after having roused against himself the enmity of all the interests involved in the mastership of the disputed provinces--Swede, Pole, Dane, and German--he suspended hostilities and returned to Moskva, there to renew the bloody process by which he periodically thinned out his circle of boyarins and courtiers. [Sidenote: 1577] Mikhail Vorotinski, the conqueror of Devlet-Girei, and one of the most illustrious of the Russian voevodas, was tortured nigh unto death on a charge of sorcery, and died while being conveyed to Bielozero. Leonidas, successor to Pimen in the archiepiscopate of Novgorod, was sewn up in a bear-skin and worried to death by hounds. Other noted Moskovites were executed in various manners at the same period. While the Tzar’s seemingly blind rage was striking down some of his most capable voevodas, his adversary was straining every nerve to ensure success in the coming struggle. Drawing as exhaustively as was prudent on the resources of his kingdom and grand duchy, Stefan at the same time applied for external support in many directions; from Transylvania came troops, from Brandenburg cannon, from Sweden active co-operation, while the Pope and Sultan individually blessed the enterprise. In August 1579 the storm burst; the King, having formally declared war on Ivan, marched upon Polotzk, and the decisive moment had arrived when it would be seen whether the new-grown Russian gosoudarstvo would be able to maintain its high-water mark of western expansion, or whether all it had gained during the embarrassments and weakness of its neighbours would be lost at the first recoil. The composite army of Stefan probably consisted of better fighting material than any the Tzar could send against him, but the advantage of numbers and resources lay overwhelmingly with the Moskovite. Allowing for the large detachment which it was necessary to keep in the neighbourhood of the Oka to guard the capital from a